Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. I am sure he has not found it possible to read the whole report yet, but it makes it clear that the inspection takes place, the inspectors make recommendations about what should happen, the council says, “You’re absolutely right, and here is our new policy,” and then nothing happens. The issue is the process between “We know we should do it” and “We aren’t going to do it.” That is why I am taking this intervention today—or, rather, why I am thinking about taking this intervention today.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

May I suggest one thing the Secretary of State might like to consider doing immediately about child abuse? When the child victims of human trafficking come into local government care, they are not recorded as victims of human trafficking. If they were, when they disappeared there would be an indication that the council was failing.

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend takes a great interest in these matters so he will know that we are trialling advocates for young people in these kinds of circumstances, and if that proves to be successful I hope we will see it rolled out rapidly. One thing that has been clear from all these cases is that the voice of the victim and voice of the survivor is just not heard, and we need to hear their voice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I would take the same position if it were a Labour council: it is a matter of local choice. What we have done is create a situation where those kinds of choices have to be made before the electorate, and the electorate have to come to a view on them. Prior to that, councillors in what would formerly have been described as smoke-filled rooms could decide these things among themselves without any transparency before the electorate. I think the hon. Gentleman should trust the people.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Adult victims of human trafficking are looked after centrally through an excellent scheme run by the Salvation Army. Unfortunately, child victims of human trafficking are left to local government to look after and are quite often re-trafficked within a week of being rescued. Will the Secretary of State look at the possibility of removing that role from local government and bringing it under a central plan, as we do for adult victims?

Local Government Finance

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I am grateful, because a scribbled note has arrived from the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster), and the figure is not £150 million but £180 million. Those announcements will be made by the Secretary of State for Education.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

East Northamptonshire district council and Wellingborough council have embraced the Secretary of State’s reforms. They have a wonderful new leisure park, a retail park plan, 2,000 new jobs and the project is ready to go. The only thing stopping the project is the Secretary of State’s Department. Will he speed up the process and approve it?

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

The national planning policy framework actually strengthens green spaces.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State aware of how much work his Minister of State is doing to unfreeze the blockages that some projects face because of red tape? Only recently our hon. Friend visited Wellingborough to cut through the red tape facing the Wellingborough East development and help with the Skew Bridge retail development, which is opposed by Labour in Corby.

[Mr Pickles]

I am delighted to hear about the magnificent work done by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I have to say though, it comes as no surprise to me that he is working very hard indeed.

Points of Order

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to give an assurance to you, Mr Speaker, that what appeared in the Financial Times and The Times on Saturday was not authorised by my Department or by any other Department. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government has explained, putting together policy statements necessarily involves talking to third parties, and it is a matter of some considerable regret that this information was released before we intended. It was our intention to release everything today.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. We regularly saw leaking under the previous Government, which was wrong, and I thought that things were going to be put right. Leaks may occur, but that does not explain why Ministers appear in the media and are grilled by journalists before they come to this House. I wonder whether that can be looked at.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I have checked the question and I think that what I said answers it exactly. I must say to the hon. Lady that her local council has £58 million available to it in non-school reserves and that youth unemployment continued to rise under Labour in the good times and the bad. We have given the flexibilities I described and it is about time that ladies and gentlemen on the Benches opposite woke up and accepted their responsibility for the financial state of the nation—the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) laughs at the idea because it is someone else’s money. Labour councils are cutting back more than Conservative councils and the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has done nothing about it.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Northamptonshire county council, East Northamptonshire district council and Wellingborough borough council have all frozen their council tax this year and they are all Conservative controlled. Is it not the case that Conservative councils cost you less and deliver more?

[Mr Pickles]

What a wonderful slogan. I wonder who first thought of it. [Interruption.] It is indeed mine and what it says has proved to be the case. There is a really strange thing about this whole process. If we match up councils authority by authority, we see that Liberal Democrat and Conservative authorities are protecting the front line, but under Labour authorities the front line is the first one to go, the voluntary sector is the first one to go and the most swingeing cuts are the first thing to happen. It is time that the right hon. Member for Don Valley accepted some responsibility for that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Pickles and Peter Bone

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

T4. The abolition of the Standards Board for England is greatly welcomed across the country, but it will have to be in the local government Bill. At the moment, there is a rush of new complaints, many of which are frivolous and malicious. Is there any way in which those can be stopped now, by stopping referrals to the Standards Board for England?

[Mr Pickles]

In fairness to the standards boards, they are trying to take away some of the more frivolous and silly complaints, the lowest level of which was the complaint that Ken Livingstone had been rude to a journalist—the very thought sends shivers down my spine, of course. Even if Ken had been a little emotional that night, the right thing is for the people to decide; it is for the electors to decide, not a quango. That entire investigation cost £200,000 and it was utterly pointless. I am doing my bit by taking substantial sums away from the standards boards.